


Trainspotting & Twilight

by Moxibustion (RyuuzaKochou)



Category: Batman - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Alternate Universe - Magic, Day Three: Size Difference And Rooftop Rendezvous, End of an era, F/F, Female Alfred Pennyworth, Female Bruce Wayne, Female Dick & Damian (off screen mentions), Female Jason Todd, Female Tim Drake, Femslash, Gender politics, Genderbending, Genderbent Batfam, JayTim Week 2021, Love At The Dawn Of The Steam Age, Love at First Sight, Romance, Rule 63, Unbeta'd - We Die Like Robins
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-17
Updated: 2021-03-18
Packaged: 2021-03-26 03:07:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 12,819
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30099357
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RyuuzaKochou/pseuds/Moxibustion
Summary: As Bryce Wayne's daughter, in name and heart if not in blood, Jaybyrd Wayne knew she had obligations that came as part and parcel of the title. She had to turn up at fetes and smile through clenched teeth and try not to start any fights, no matter how badly she wants to. The Gotham Carrantages - the mountainous lands where they called home - had been warring and pillaging for centuries and they were only just now starting to learn better ways. Bryce was finally starting to make them understand that their magical Gifts, once used only for war, could be turned to better things and far be it for Jaybyrd to disrupt the process.It would be nice if everyone wasn't so obsessed with getting her to marry, or so annoyingly horrified at her thoroughly modern education. Jaybyrd was never very good at playing stupid. She was never very good at being anything other than herself, liked or not. Mostly not.Then she meets a girl she'd never seen before. One she unexpectedly finds she can be herself around. Another girl who wants to reach out and embrace a new, modern world; if only Jaybyrd can convince her to run from everything she's ever known.
Relationships: Jason Todd & Bruce Wayne, Tim Drake & Bruce Wayne, Tim Drake/Jason Todd
Comments: 5
Kudos: 68
Collections: JayTim Week 2021





	1. Volume One

**Author's Note:**

> Day Three! I'm really looking for to this one.
> 
> This is kind of a quasi crossover with Ursula K. Leguin's Annals Of The Western Shore. I can't call it a true fusion, because I've cherry picked a lot of concepts straight from the books but not recreated the whole world, so you don't have to have read those books to understand what's happening here. You might say I have sampled from the series, lovingly and with respect. I couldn't, in a trillion lifetimes, hope to match her elegant prose. This short story was born out of a longer, more epic tale I had in mind, that was just too complicated and I never ended up writing. When JayTim Week came up my brain circled back to it and said 'okay, how about you just do a scene' and I said 'okay' and then my brain said 'but make it femslash', because that's how my brain rolls.
> 
> It was also borne out of my quasi-contempt for Game Of Thrones. Not the actual stories, because they were well written (though I only managed to slog through one book before hitting my maximum misery quota and giving the TV series a miss), but the impossibility of fantasy settings that finally landed for me when they mentioned they were going to do a prequel TV show to the TV show - set 8000 years in the past.
> 
> I mean, what the fuck? What the actual fuck? I get it, swords and sorcery, dragons, suspension of certain levels of disbelief are required etc, etc. I can swallow all the fire breathing lizards and unlikely sword battles and zombies and wizards, fine. But the breathtaking story conceit that a society would not change over 8000 years? We haven't managed a single static society or culture for a *century* in all of human history. I'm sorry, but human culture does not work that way. We progress, we regress, but we're always moving. And women especially tend to benefit socially from the advent of technology - from washing machines to computers; thus, my fantasy epic is for the women, starring women.
> 
> Day Three: Size Difference AND Rooftop Rendezvous (I hit both!)

The man with the strongest Gift owns the Mant, defends it and chooses its politics as the Brantor. He will, of course, marry a woman with strong Gifts herself. 

The woman with the strongest Gift marries a Brantor, runs the Mant and sets the fashions as the Brantari. She will, of course, bear strong children for the Brantor and the continuation of Gifts.

The man with the Strongest Gift of all, the dreaded Unmaking, is the High Brantor, the only authority all the Mants recognise. He will, of course, be an example to all, a standard they must follow; whether it be in riding, hunting, fighting prowess, raiding or showing authority to the lesser people under their auspices. 

These are truths which run parallel throughout the history of the Gotham Carrantages, seldom unfulfilled and never questioned. The Brantors traced their bloodlines back through a thousand generations of strong men, who survived battles and protected the Mants.

This led to certain complications with Bryce Wayne, who, by dint of being an only child and being orphaned in a raid, was _both_ the owner of Waynemant and the last inheritor of the Unmaking and therefore must, logically, the High Brantor by default. Only, she is, not to put too fine a point on it, a woman. 

The Mants were aghast at this development. It felt as if in following the rules as they had always done a couple of very fundamental unspoken ones had been broken. Bryce’s seat of power was, by tradition and by law, so unassailable that she set both the political _and_ the fashion trends, and had, bewilderingly, opted out of the whole marriage business altogether. 

On reflection, that whole strongest Gift thing really bit them in the ass, big time. 

But since they’d rather have tradition and therefore face the bewildering complication of a _woman_ being their High Brant...ari than do something radical like that democracy idea the lowlanders keep going on about, they sucked it up and grit their crooked teeth and accepted it, while fervently and surreptitiously trying to get Bryce Wayne married. To _anyone_ at this point.

Or, failing that, her daughters.

Jaybyrd Wayne irritably tugged at her high collar. The Brantari sets the fashions and since Bryce Wayne had started a new craze for chasing down raiders herself in leathers and boots like a knight of old, female fashions had, accordingly, shifted to match. The actual high collar on actual armour, which Jaybyrd had _actually worn_ , thank you, was absolutely nothing like the intricately etched and overly ornamental piece of frippery choking her right now, but the look of the thing was apparently the key. So was the leather bodice and the high boots, because the fashion for tall women was firmly in. The resplendent red of Jaybyrds long dress skirt was decidedly _not_. The fashionable crowd had even aped Bryce’s predilection for dark blues, purples and blacks and scorned the brighter shades on a woman. But damnation, she would wear red because Jaybyrd Wayne was not and never had been a fashion plate. 

“I told you to break it in before the gala,” Bryce murmured facetiously as she glided along the corridor with her second eldest. 

“Yes, _thank you_ B, I had ever so much time to break in my fake-ass gala armour while I was busy making use of my real one!” Jaybyrd said irritably. “How come Dixie and Dami got out of this, anyway?”

“Richaldis and Damienne wanted to go pick up supplies for Damienne’s school year,” Bryce shrugged.

“Oh, come on! The demoness had everything she needed! They just wanted to ride the new steam train down to the city,” Jaybyrd said, still resentful that the pair had gotten to ride on the fascinating new contraption before she herself had gotten the chance to. 

“You could have gone with them, Jay,” Bryce was amused.

“Oh no, one round of Demon In The City was more than enough for me,” Jaybyrd spat. “Dixie can have that pleasure all to herself. That brat was born about two hundred years late. She would have been perfectly suited to the good old days when all the Mants used to slay each other for fun.”

“Yes well,” Bryce couldn’t quite deny her youngest child was rather too inclined to the old ways of the Mants and the bloody victories that came with them. “That’s why she’s going to school so that we might remove some of her grandfather’s influences. And Jay, difficult or not, she _is_ your bysister. Do not disparage her,” Bryce chided.

“Sorry B,” Jaybyrd muttered. 

“She can’t help that she was raised on all that ancient history nonsense,” Bryce added, carefully stroking her tall daughter’s hair so as to not upset the flowers woven into the styling. “And she can’t help it if all the other Brantors encourage the attitude either. They want the Gift of Unmaking firmly under the control of the traditionalists and I’m certainly not that. Damienne is, and that makes her vulnerable to the honey they keep pouring in her ear when she acts like one of the old tyrants. I’m hoping a modern education in a Gotham school might help dispel some of the untruths she’s been taught. After all, it worked for you.”

Jaybyrd grumbled slightly. It was true she’d been a half feral drifter when she’d stumbled into Waynemant one winter, certain she’d be made a thrall or a gift girl but still not willing to simply curl up and die in the snow. She was no one from nowhere in a world that _worshipped_ bloodlines; a scorned byblow bastard of the Brantor of Toddmant, the tyrannical old jackass who lived in the poorest and most backward Mant in the entire region, in the marshes of the rivermouth. 

The people there were as superstitious and traditional as they came, clinging to the old beliefs even as modern iron tracks cut straight paths through their lands to the fertile, wealthy trading centers of the lowlands. Jaybyrd had been no exception in backwards thinking at the start. The fact that she genuinely thought that _thralls_ were still a thing was testament to her erratic education. They may still be thralls in Toddmant, but the rest of the Carrantages had moved on from such things at least a generation ago, often two or three. 

Todd probably still believed none of his Gift had found a home in her. They didn’t believe women should have Gifts in Toddmant, and swiftly killed any poor girl found to have one, or sold her. Jaybyrd’s mother had been a beaten down gift girl, nearly all the spirit crushed out of her, but one bit of wisdom she’d managed to pass to her daughter was the necessity of keeping the Spell Knife hidden. It had spared Jaybyrd, at least long enough to make it to Waynemant and unexpectedly find an actual home through which she'd been blessed with a modern education. 

Despite her new advantages, Jaybyrd couldn’t comment on the likelihood of Damienne Wayne finding she had a heart at the new schools in Gotham. She did feel a flash of sympathy for the poor teachers who would be given the unenviable task of digging for it. 

“I miss school,” Jaybyrd said wistfully. Dixie was too free spirited to get much out of school and Dami too arrogant. Jaybyrd loved it, though. She loved the books and the studies and the way the world could be looked at in new and better ways. She liked that no one looked at her like some nameless bastard child, or some cursed creature with a frightening, deadly Gift. Most of the city children barely believed Gifts were even real. To them, they were old, scary stories, no more truthful than any other tall tale about monsters under the beds and in the fields. 

“You’ll be back there soon enough, Jay,” Bryce smiled at her. “In the meantime, try to be… patient.”

Jaybyrd’s eyes narrowed suspiciously.

“I hate to say this, little bird, but you’re not so little anymore,” Bryce said seriously. “The Brantors are all mumbling about you being well old enough to marry. The Brantari aren’t mumbling; they’re flat out shouting. Their courtship attempts will likely be less than subtle.”

Jaybyrd groaned. “No wonder Dix ducked out. She doesn’t want a bunch of Mantsons pawing all over her. Well, they’re about to be dead out of luck with me, aren’t they? I,” she declared hotly. “Am not ever going to marry.”

“That’s my girl,” Bryce smiled as they reached the door. “Ready?”

Jaybyrd shrugged, indicating she gave it all up to fate.

Bryce nodded to Alfreida, who was waiting patiently by the big doors that separated the family solar from the main hall. The silver haired knower-of-all-things and, really, the shadow-Brantari of Waynemant, tilted her head knowingly but opened the door, and into the cacophony beyond. 

It was the high summer fete, the largest gathering of Mants they held, just after the harvests were done and the world, briefly, was filled to the brim with plenty. They’d come to Waynemant from leagues around, even the more solitary Mants out at the edges or deep in the mountains where they’d usually keep to themselves. It was a chance to rub shoulders, show off various new acquisitions and generally pretend that they weren’t at each other's throats for the sake of land, valuables or pride most of the year

It would be a nightmare of constant diplomacy and fervent tongue biting and teeth clenching, Jaybyrd knew. The bar of good behaviour for such gatherings was low. The Mants were each a law unto their own and didn’t take to submitting to another Mant’s - even the Waynemant’s - very graciously. 

All they could probably expect was some desultory gestures of respect and the mass of them holding most of the worst of their low opinions of the scandalously radical Waynes on their tongues. Even so, Jaybyrd didn’t have high hopes. The magic that flowed through the Carrantages and all of them had moods and everything felt particularly sour today. There was an ugly, prickly, cold tinged edge to the air. 

Of course there were the sneering Brantari, their rouged lips curling with disdain but still not managing to hide their naked envy. Whatever else you could say about Jaybyrd Wayne’s brazen and immodest demeanor, the young woman, as toweringly tall as most men in her bare feet and taller than most in a room in her well-worn boots, was the very essence of the current fashionable fads; statuesque, buxom, and dark haired. If they took issue with the tint of her skin, most detractors would take careful note of the wealth she had access to, shrug it off and file it under exotic.

Then there were the Brantors and their various interconnected entourages. They looked her over like a second hand horse up for bidding, but were always dismayed to find their looks returned to them tenfold in cold blue. Jaybyrd stared back until they broke and they _always,_ shamefully and resentfully, broke first. They were, to a greater or lesser extent, all versions of her hated sire, and if they wanted to make her submit, well; _he_ hadn’t managed the feat when she’d been a deprived and frightened child of eight, so she didn’t see any of these moldy old relics faring any better now.

The Mantsons were transparently trying to court her and most hadn’t yet quite cottoned on to the fact that talking about dresses, music and scandalous gossip made her disdain for them a certainty. A few marginally brighter ones would bandy about more masculine topics, horseflesh, current raids, news of the wider world, but would soon find themselves at the business end of an exhausting debate, where they quickly found themselves fumbling and wilting in the face of Jaybyrd’s blade sharp intellect. She could see them falling back with true horror in their eyes at what this new-fangled ‘schooling’ had done to an otherwise superb Brantari candidate. 

If Mantsons were timid and boring, the Mantdaughters were somehow worse, because Jaybyrd _wanted_ to be interested in them. 

There were a few, rare sort whose mothers actually ran their Mants like Bryce did and while no Mantfolk had yet shown the humility in them to send their children off to be taught something other than the traditional lessons, these girls at least tended to be sensible and practical. You had to have a good head on your shoulders to survive the uplands as a Gifted female, with its continually feuding Mants and endless raids, where girl children counted amongst the more valuable kind of loot. 

They were far more willing to embrace the modern day than the sons. Some of them that knew her personally would get her to buy books for them from the city on the sly. Books were once valuable, rare and hand drawn with expensive calligraphy and carefully painted gold leaf. Now the printing presses in the city could churn out hundreds of copies, which made them cheap and accessible. The Waynemant had been considered an oddity for a century for having more than a dozen books under its eaves; now it had thousands. It was quite upsetting to the Mantfolk’s sensibilities, especially because the Waynes also disseminated books amongst the low class populace of the Carrantages. Even the poor! Even the women!

Sadly, for every uncut gem amongst the girlfolk there was a bucket load of scree and dross and tonight it looked like they had all been heaped in front of Jaybyrd. Smirking, simpering and sly, the Mantdaughters on offer at the fete were all saccharine flattery and subtle knives. Not a gem in the bunch.

“Jaybyrd, my dear, how we missed you when you went off to the city,” one gushed with sugar laden concern. “It must have been horrendous! I’ve heard they beat you there!”

Jaybyrd squinted at this sally. “Beat, like, how badly?” she riposted. “Because the punishment for getting your recitations wrong in these parts is five quick lashes with a strap, and the school is nowhere near as bad as that. They’re not allowed to draw blood even. Like, literally, that’s an actual law.”

‘Gusher’ faltered slightly, looking puzzled, the rest of the twittering flock echoing her. “Law? The city has laws? They don’t never have a Brantor! Who enforces these laws?”

“The police,” Jaybyrd replied to this levelly, feeling some part of her brilliant brain wail in despair. “They make sure everybody living or in the city environs follows the law, or they get arrested and charged. Why do you need to ask?” her brows knotted in fairly convincing confusion - she wasn’t First in Theater at school for nothing! “You should know this Saliayne. Your brother was arrested there but a month ago.”

Saliayne flushed scarlet while the rest of the flock all looked scandalized and gleeful. “It was an insult to us and our Mant,” she hissed angrily. “Those filthy thief takers had the gall to stick Allernot in some _cage_ . Like an _animal_ . Or a _peasant.”_

“He _did_ break the law, Sal,” Jaybyrd replied, knowing it was futile, but damnation, Bryce’s idealism was infectious. “He nearly set half a block on fire when they demanded he pay his hotel bill.”

“But we are Mantfolk!” Saliayne’s voice took on a shrill note. “Mantfolk! We do not pay for lodgings! The sheer nerve of them even asking, and the heir of the Brantor himself no less! Allernot was in the right, by our laws!”

Jaybird breathed through her nose. “Our laws, such as they are, don’t extend down to the city. We have agreements and everything about it. Surely, as an _educated_ and _well trained_ heir your brother would know that.”

Saliayne’s red lips went thin as parchment at the hardly indirect insult to her brother’s intelligence and her Mant’s honour. 

Jaybird grimaced inside. Bryce was going to kill her; she never stifled any of her daughter’s voices but she did ask them to not stir up unnecessary trouble. An insult like that would have meant war in more fraught times; it could lead to all sorts of pained feelings and angry arguments now.

“We shouldn’t _need_ to know such stupid things,” Saliayne said slowly and deliberately, looking Jaybyrd up and down, like every inch of her was wanting. “If we had a real High Brantor in place who was willing and able to show those city vermin their _place_ . Proof of the sad diminishment of a once noble and mighty line, I expect. But then again, perhaps they always had odd ideas about _vermin_ in Waynemant.”

There were a chorus of gasps from behind, but Jaybyrd couldn’t be bothered with them. She felt the tingle in her hands that meant the Spell Knife was unsheathing in reaction to her rage at the insult. These silly birds could peck at her all they wanted, but _no one_ insulted Bryce. 

Thankfully, Bryce had been the one to teach her to channel her rage, rather than just unleashing it. She shot Saliayne a wide smile, all teeth. “Yes, well. It is an age of new ideas, after all. Astermant hasn’t had any for about two centuries now, you might be due. Somehow I don’t think Allernot is going to be the one to have it; as that would require having an actual thought of his own. It says something, I think, when even the so-called vermin can outsmart you, doesn’t it?”

Saliayne swelled up indignantly and made to stamp her foot, which was a mistake because the current fashion to be tall meant that if nature hadn’t provided then a cobbler would have to take on the job. Saliayne’s boots were too high to take the sudden violent shift and she ended up in an ungainly, clumsy stumble into some of her entourage. They too, were similarly well heeled, and it turned into a bevy of tottering, like birds drunk on rotten grapes, which made Jaybyrd laugh at them.

Really, it was a pity in a way. The girl herself was not objectionable physically, and the ugliness that poured out of her mouth was the result of bad education rather than bad character. Saliayne really _believed_ what she parroted; that the Wayne line was encrippled and feeble because Bryce had never gathered the Mantsons and gone down to the lowlands to cheerfully cause mayhem, death and destruction to remind the people to whom they owed obedience to. She really believed that Bryce’s failure to turn semi-benign, farmer terrorizing tyrant reflected badly on all of them, that it stained their honour and robbed them of their dignity.

They weren’t yet enlightened enough to know where the indignity really lay.

The air around them went cold as ice as Saliayne drew herself up, nearly blue in the face. “If Bryce Wayne were _any_ kind of High Brantor… Brantari, even, she would have ridden down to Gotham herself and secured my brother’s release, as well as ensured the lamentations of the women of all the men that dared lay a finger on him!” Saliayne said shrilly, her lips looking purple in her rage, quite forgetting in her anger to keep her voice down. “She would have married and beget find Gifted heirs, not adopted cast off drabes from nowhere! She is a _disgrace_ to all of us!”

Jaybyrd could see the moment it suddenly dawned on Saliayne that she’d just insulted the High Brantari and one of her children at the top of her lungs in the Brantari’s own Mant. Even by the Mantfolks erratically applied standards, that was an enormous faux pas. That sort of thing could have _deep_ ramifications. People loyal to Astermant would have to stand with them for honour’s sake. The traditionalists would all mutter and mumble, urging people to pick sides to the point of sparking a full on feud because then it would be just like the good old days where they could snatch back some of their lost power. It was something Bryce had worked diligently for the last two decades to stop happening at all. 

She went pale as snow and Jaybyrd scrambled to find something, anything, to cover her. Less out of concern for her than for the sake of all Bryce’s hard work; after all, Jaybyrd had been the one to provoke her instead of backing away. Jaybyrd could see Bryce working her way through the crowd.

“How would that work?” asked a new voice curiously into the silence.

They both turned. Jaybyrd blinked. She could claim to know most of the families in these parts, but this creature was a stranger to her. Which was odd, because she stuck out pretty obviously amidst the crowd.

For one thing, she was _short_. Tall was currently in fashion in the sense that everyone made themselves as tall as possible, but most of the Mantfolk bred for tall in any case and had for generations; the better to ride the big warhorses. This girl was _short_ , even wearing the fashionable high heel boots currently in favor. 

And speaking of fashion, the girl herself had none to be seen. Or, at least, none that wasn’t about fifty years out of date. No faux armor, no elaborate, tightly coiffed updo; she was a vision in soft cream lace and dusty pinks. The only conformance to current standards of dress were the aforementioned boots and the dark hair, which was braided at the temples but left to flow unfashionably all the way down her back in a shiny, wavy waterfall. 

Jaybyrd felt her throat go unexpectedly dry.

The girl tilted her head slightly, like a curious bird, her blue eyes fixed unswervingly on the mortified Saliayne, whose entourage was rapidly backing away, leaving her abandoned as her incoming disgrace roared towards her like a new fangled steam train. “I mean, you couldn’t just ride down the highway and straight into the city square like the Waynes were famous for. They put up all those bolsters to keep horses out of the city center.”

Saliayne squeaked at her, eyes bulging. “Uh…”

Jaybyrd was gaping at the girl. Was she actually trying to make it _worse?_

“I mean, the Asters, they were strategists,” the girl continued, bright eyes blithely fixed on Saliayne. “They would’ve set the grain silos on fire. But that won’t work today either.”

“Wh… why not?” Saliayne was so flummoxed she actually turned curious. “That is a fitting punishment for a transgression!”

“Yes, but, don’t you store your _own_ grain in the city silos now? They’re much bigger and cleaner than the old stone ones in the foothills,” the girl pointed out. “I mean, the Callans would have much better luck. They could spoil the waters. They’re probably the only ones that _could_ strike at Gotham, now.”

“That’s not the Callans, you’re thinking of the Griers!” one of the Mantsons burst out. “And we _could_ too!”

“Yeah, and what are you going to do about the water sources from the south, genius?” Another one piped up, snorting. 

“It’s true, the Griers tried that during the Ten Day War and they couldn’t keep it up when the Monts withdrew their blockade. Or was that the Stanes?” the girl started to look puzzled. “Sorry, I’m getting confused. Is the Barrington Strategy the one that broke the siege of Cantor, with the Aster and the Dells and… the Lapps? Lamps?”

“It was the Lens,” someone yelled.

“The _Lents_ , where did you learn history? And Barrington would work only _if_ we could cut off the Great Road,” another said.

“Forget the great road, they actually have ships now! What in Ennu’s name are the Lens or the Dells going to do against that?” another added, but the tone of the room was starting to shift.

The small girl's eyes met Jaybyrd’s pleadingly.

Suddenly, Jaybyrd got it. If there was one thing these idiots liked more than recreating ancient history, it was talking about it. And Mant history is full to the brim of battles, their greatness carefully cultivated and preserved.

“That’s what you’d need the Asters for, right?” Jaybyrd said slowly. “Like, they’d handle the fleet and then you’d marshal your Tennars and your Monts to take out the walls. Didn’t they do that in the Turnwise Campaign late in the Red Century? B, that’s right, isn’t it?”

“The Turnwise _Maneuver_ was used in the Red Century, Jay, do remember your history. The Turnwise _Campaign_ was part of the Great Eastern Walk. And neither of them would work on Gotham today, unless someone has an alternative to using the Philia and Buren bloodlines because they’re both long gone.”

“With all due respect, Branteri, you _could,_ ” one of the Mantsons burst out. “You just need to forge an alliance with the Barres over the Drumhead Mount.”

“Horse traders!” someone yelled. “You might as well ask the Tells to come off the peaks!”

“But if you _could_ , there’s your cavalry forces to pull off a Turnwise because they breed horses that can go anywhere and will. The bolsters won’t stop those beasts.”

“Yes, but the point isn’t to take the _square_ , is it? The square isn’t where they keep the important things anymore! Saliayne Aster is right, you need to take the silos,” the strange girl pointed out.

“I am?” Saliayne blinked. “Well, I mean, that seems like the obvious course to me. People tend to notice when dinner doesn’t show up; it would get their attention.”

“For all that, you might as well pull a Huden Maneuver and be done with it.”

“A _Huden_? In a _city?_ You’re mad, man!”

And suddenly the sourness in the air dissipated as it was a fantasy battle free for all. Condiments and foodstuff were lined up on tables to represent various forces and the elderly all eagerly threw in their coins of thought with the deadly seriousness of a true council as war, arguing stridently with each other about various old victories that they thought they could have again. Repeated versions of _that’s madness, that’ll never work_ and _listen, will you just listen?_ Rang out as everyone gathered around to argue. 

Bryce raised an eyebrow at the sudden furore as they all went back and forth about an imaginary raid that would never happen. It was loud but it wasn’t the start of a feud by a long way. They were way too invested in the minutiae for actual blood insults. Jaybyrd shrugged at her look.

They both turned to the tiny interloper, who looked unaccountably relieved. “Um… well met, High Brantari,” she said. Instead of the traditional knee-drop bow she held out her right hand in the common lowlander greeting. 

Sort of. When Bryce mirrored the action and grasped it, the girl frowned and wriggled their hands around. “The book said you shake them but it wasn’t very clear on _how_. I’ve only read about it books, sorry,” she said sheepishly, ears turning red.

Bryce cracked a smile. “Up and down, like so,” she performed the action firmly. “And then release. Forgive me, but you seem to have the advantage of me.”

The girl looked taken aback and deeply confused by that accusation.

“Bryce, don’t be facetious,” Jaybyrd held out her hand as well. “She wants to know your name. Hi, I’m Jaybyrd Wayne, of Waynemant.” 

The girl happily put her dainty but long fingers into Jaybyrd’s strong grip. “Oh, yes, that’s right! Um, hello, my name is Tiamat Drake. Of Drakemant. Oh, and it’s a pleasure to meet you,” she beamed. “That was in the book too.”

_Tiamat_ , Jaybyrd repeated the name in her head. She even had an old fashioned name. Jaybyrd smiled, charmed beyond measure.

“I haven’t seen Jack Drake in… ten years?” Bryce’s musing made them break apart. 

“Um… my father seldom leaves the Mant. Or at least, our lands. He travels all over the mountains looking for artefacts and old books and things,” Tiamat said carefully. 

“The Drakes always had a kind of mania for collecting things,” Bryce nodded. “Are they here?” she added, eyes on Tiamat’s pale face keenly.

“No,” Tiamat shuffled uncomfortably. “Um… actually, my mother _was_ here but, um… she’s not anymore. Sort of.”

Jaybyrd blinked. “She left?”

“Right about the time Saliayne had her bewildering little outburst, I suspect,” Bryce raised an eyebrow at Tiamat significantly. “I sensed something in the air tonight. I noticed the faint blue on Saliayne’s lips and wondered if there wasn’t a malicious force at play. Your mother was one of the Ellan line, I think. Able to send their spirit out into the world to spy and to whisper in unsuspecting ears.”

Tiamat went red. 

Jaybyrd’s jaw dropped open. “You mean your mother was using a Gift on Saliayne? Why?” Then her eyes narrowed. “To stir up the Brantors and make them feud? Were you _helping_ her?” she asked angrily. She shouldn’t be by now, but the idea that this was just another hidebound and vindictive Mantdaughter was unexpectedly crushing and made her voice sharper than it would have been.

“I…” Tiamat looked mortified. “I wasn’t…”

“You were trying to stop her,” Bryce deduced softly. “She tried to stir up a fight but you disarmed it, very cleverly might I add.”

Tiamat flushed. “Um… she’s not malicious, I swear! She just doesn’t like the trains.”

There was a baffled silence as they tried to understand that. “Your supposed not-malicious mother just tried to foment a bloody and ugly feud where people would have died because she doesn’t like trains?” Jaybyrd crossed her arms sternly, glaring. “That doesn’t seem all that not-malicious to _me_. That seems downright vindictive.”

Tiamat wilted.

“Jay,” Bryce’s tone was a warning. “Let her explain before you pass judgement.”

Jaybyrd shot her a disgruntled look. Honestly, she was getting sick of being told to ‘understand’ these idiots who wielded their ignorance like a damn sword and got innocent people hurt doing it.

Tiamat fidgeted with her sleeve ribbons. “Drakemant technically borders on Waynemant. Sort of, there’s a great lump of mountains in the way, of course. Um… we heard you were letting the train builders make a line all the way through your lands and into the mountains.”

“Yes, that’s true,” Bryce affirmed. “It will take many years to complete the line all the way through, though. And we’ve mapped it out so that it doesn’t encroach on any Mant lands, just the mountains and passages that nobody owns. We made that very clear to all the Mants. You mother can’t be worried about her Mant’s lands being stolen or diminished in size.”

“Um no, but… the train will pass very _close_ to Drakemant,” Tiamat tried to explain. “Very close. Close enough for my father to see it and… and my father always wanted to travel, you see. Drakemant is surrounded by mountains, there’s nowhere to go that it doesn’t take a lot of time and effort to get to and we can’t risk the Brantor falling off a cliff so he never really got to.”

“Ah,” Bryce realized. “But the train is _safe._ He could travel if he wanted to if it went through the mountains.”

“What?” Jaybyrd looked from one to the other. “Why is that such a big deal to your mother?”

“Because if the Brantor leaves, traditionally, the Brantari is confined to the Mant to ensure the bloodline and the Mant’s seat of authority, Jay,” Bryce pointed out. “He’d be free to see the world, she’d be left behind in prison, essentially.”

“She can just go with him!” Jaybyrd burst out, exasperated. “Who would stop her?”

“She doesn’t understand that,” Tiamat retorted pleadingly. “She doesn’t… that sort of thing doesn’t _happen_ like that in her mind. She knows how badly he wants to travel. She knows he will if it could be made safe and easy. She thinks he’ll _leave_ her. It would never even occur to her she could go as well. I tried to explain it but she’s born from a Mant even deeper in the mountains. I don’t think she’s ever been outside them before. She doesn’t… she just doesn’t understand that she can leave if she wants to. She loves my father very deeply and she thinks if he has to choose between her and the world he’d not going to pick _her_.” Tiamat finished miserably. “She wasn’t being malicious, I swear. She’s just desperate not to have the trains come through the mountains. I suppose she thought a feud at Waynemant would halt the building, at least for a little while.”

Tiamat’s whole polished posture slumped into despair.

Jaybyrd felt some of her anger dissolve. The whole situation was just pitiable in its own way. They were at the mercy of a bunch of people who were so convinced of past glory that the future was full of fear to them, as if they had any choice about which way they were heading. This tiny creature’s mother was hardly the only hidebound and ignorant backwater Mantfolk who looked to stir trouble because stirring trouble is how they dealt with change they didn’t like.

Worst still, they’d be so much better off for the change. But they'd never believe it, would they?

“And you came here to stop her,” Bryce said shrewdly.

“I knew she’d try something at the summer fete. It’s the only time everyone is together, it’s the only time she could cause an insult big enough,” Tiamat nodded. “I had to try, even though I knew her scheme wouldn’t work anyway. You’ve kept peace on your lands for twenty years or more, the Mants around here are starting to prefer it. I doubt even if she’d managed to foment a war it would have been as big as she thought it would be and the trains still would come. But… people would have died for nothing and I couldn’t abide the dishonour of that. I just thought I could keep it from getting too bad,” she finished weakly. "Even if she hates me for it, I couldn’t let it stand. I came as fast as I could the second I could get away."

“So, you just came all the way from the high mountains? On your own?” Jaybyrd asked incredulously.

“Yes,” Tiamat nodded. “It wasn’t too hard. Um. I rode through the mountain passes on deerback, they can be quite fast. And, um, I offered to act as an amanuesis to one of the big wagon convoys heading for the fete. I can read and write. My parents don’t do either very much but I taught myself, since it’s a shame father collects so many books but just leaves them to collect dust in the vault. He collects them for the having but surely they’re there to be read, after all,” Tiamat shrugged, like this feat didn’t set her, figuratively, head and shoulders above the other Mantdaughters by a long measure.

The sound of raucous yelling from what seemed like a fifty person, hundred alliance debate reached their little conversation, quite breaking Bryce’s and Jaybyrd’s incredulous and interested stares. Bryce looked over at the hubbub and sighed. “You must be very tired, Tiamat. Jay, can you take her to Alfreida and tell her to give her something to eat? Then get back in here so we can keep things getting _too_ heated. I’d hate to see all Tiamat’s efforts wasted. I’ll come and talk to you more later, Tiamat.” She patted Tiamat on the head and gave Jaybyrd’s shoulder a squeeze, then she fearlessly glided off into the fray, authority in every stride.

Jaybyrd looked at her new charge, who, now that she’d spun her tale and confessed to her mother’s ignorant sins, looked pale and worn down. Details spun before Jaybyrd’s keen gaze; the sunken look in the smaller girl’s eyes, which nevertheless darted around with bright curiosity and awe; the way she grimaced as she shifted her weight on her new-looking boots and self-consciously tried to smooth the wrinkles in her old-fashioned dress. She’d probably been on the road not a day ago and didn’t look like she’d been sleeping well at all even before that. Jaybyrd’s gently took her by the arm and steered her towards the kitchens, feeling a swell of compassion for the poor girl who’d come a very long way to do the right thing, defying her family in the process.

She knew the feeling of having a parent be a disappointing tyrant.

Herding her into the kitchens, Jaybyrd flagged down a rosy cheeked Alfreida who was overseeing the roasting and sauces.

“Alf, this is Tiamat,” Jaybyrd gently tugged the smaller girl forward. “She’s from Drakemant. Tiamat, this is Alfreida our Mantkeeper. She basically runs this place.”

“The kitchens?” Tiamat looked around them, full of curiosity.

“Those too,” Jaybyrd quipped dryly, but wilted when Alfreida gave her a stern look. “Alf, Tiamat’s come a long way and she’s famished. Can she eat and rest in here for a bit? B and I have to go deal with something.”

Alfreida’s mein softened when she looked over Tiamat. “Right this way.”

Tiamat found herself installed on one of the kitchen benches tucked into an alcove, where she’d be left in peace and mostly out of the way. Jaybyrd fussed over covering her up with a warm fur rug for a while, wanting to ask more questions but not sure how to make an opening salvo.

“Um. I like the flowers in your hair,” Tiamat said softly. “I’ve never seen flowers like that before.”

Problem solved. Jaybird plucked a sprig out of her tight coils of dark hair and held it out for Tiamat to take. “It’s called marthastella. It grows all over the place in Waynemant. Smells like honey and lemon. It’s good for colds too.”

Tiamat took it and sniffed it, smiling. “It’s lovely. Is it your favorite?”

“Honestly, flowers aren’t exactly my thing,” Jaybyrd admitted ruefully. “I only know about these since I have to wear them a lot. It’s our sigil flower.”

“What do you like?” Tiamat asked curiously.

“Riding, archery and swordplay,” Jaybyrd answered promptly, because she wasn’t going to hide who she was to look more appealing and never had. “Um, I like horses as well. And reading. And I can play a lute moderately well.” Honestly, her whole life could be summed up by an almost complete dearth of traditionally feminine pursuits. 

“Really?” Tiamat looked delighted by this list of dubious accomplishments rather than taken aback. “I like staff fighting. All the women in Drakemant are expected to know it, since their job was to take the herds deeper into the mountains if raiders came. As long as you’re carrying a big heavy crook you might as well learn to swing it as well, right? I taught myself knife throwing because mother wouldn’t let me do archery and the knives were easier to hide. I like books and reading too. I can play the flute and the harp but I’ve never played a lute before. Oh, and I like poetry as well. _I wander a world in darkest night,”_ she recited. _“Guided by naught but your steadfast light, Vainly hoping as I worship your shine, that as yours is to me as you can see mine._ Sorry,” she broke off sheepishly. “I’m not the best at recitation. I know that’s how we’re supposed to learn, but I don’t want to learn by someone talking at me. Sometimes I want to discover for myself what something means. I can’t understand why they don’t like it.”

Jaybyrd stared at her, mouth agape. She’d never met anyone, Mantdaughter or not, who admitted so freely to the constraints they lived under, with such a clear headed view of their arbitrary nature. Jaybyrd agreed with her sentiments, but she’d been raised by Bryce Wayne and had gone to school as well, which had informed a more well rounded view of the traditions they'd been confined by. This lovely creature had grown up in what sounded like a pretty isolated and traditionalist Mant, with no outside influences or context. That she could make such a mental leap was an astonishing contradiction, like falling into the mud and finding a bag of gold.

“Uh… yeah, I think that too,” Jaybyrd said, grinning slowly. The sound of someone throwing a cup and shouting filtered even through the noise of the kitchen. “Whoops, I’d better go. You’ll wait here until I get back, alright?”

“Yes, alright,” Tiamat smiled, still spinning Jaybyrd’s sprig in her fingers. 

Jaybyrd hurried back to the impromptu fantasy battle club in the Mant Hall and prepared to mediate. It had to be said that it was almost better if she hadn’t, for her mind wasn’t precisely on the job.


	2. Volume Two

Hours later, sweaty, hungry and fed up, Jaybyrd staggered back through the kitchen doors. The main meal had been taken out, the useless old fogeys were all suckling on their great lumps of meat, their children were all twittering like birds and no one had died. 

All in all, a success; especially since Alfreida had watered down the drink and added some spice to it so it still had the burn they were looking for. With any luck they’d survive with all the guests packed under their roof without any blood spilled until tomorrow where they would send all the bastards, their sneering wives and their idiot children on their merry way, no worse for wear.

Jaybyrd had begged off dining at the banquet tables in lieu of checking on their unexpected guest, which Bryce had assented to with far too much amusement. Jaybyrd should probably count her blessings that Dixie wasn’t here to tease her about her new crush.

Before she went to see Tiamat, Jaybyrd grabbed a plate full of roast cuts and bread and scarfed them down with unladylike haste. She was famished and didn’t want to bumpkinize herself with a gurgling stomach in front of Tiamat, who was, despite coming from far more humbly educated and socially backwards environs, was one of the most sophisticated and dignified people she’d ever met.

Alfreida raised an eyebrow at her wayward granddaughter sitting on a kitchen counter with her scarlet drapery spread around her and stuffing her face, but didn’t comment.

“They’re all quiet out there now,” Jaybyrd reported. “Mostly. Have the servers reported any trouble?” she asked seriously, because some of the Mantfolk were not particularly careful or considerate with their own underlings let alone any else’s staff.

“Oh, one or two minor complaints,” Alfreida replied. “Mostly young men filled with vim and vigour towards the maids. I daresay Mistress Wayne has dealt with them herself.”

She probably had, and the Brantors had all probably found her insistence on treating the staff like actual human beings appalling too. But it wasn’t like any of them were actually willing to stand up to the ball-withering threat of the Unmaking, never mind that B literally never used her Gift and wouldn’t even if threatened. The idea of it alone kept them all in line.

“How’s our guest?” Jaybyrd asked with feigned casualness that Alfreida probably saw right through.

“She was a lamb,” Alfreida reported with pride. “Very quiet. She could stand to eat more but she was very gracious to the maids. She was asleep in the alcove last I checked. The poor girl looked so tired I didn’t have the heart to wake her taking her up to one of the guest rooms. Besides, given our almost full capacity she might have ended up in a room full of strangers anyway.”

Jaybyrd grimaced. Yes, not ideal. Their not-esteemed guests were taking up a lot of their space. Come the witching hour the main hall would be lined with palliasses so their entourage, servants and others would have somewhere to sleep that wasn’t a stable or on the ground outside. 

“Maybe we could invite her into the solar?” Jaybyrd mused. The solar was strictly for family only. Even the old fogeys respected that rule. It might look a bit weird if they invited a stranger in there but hell, Waynemant was known for being more than a little bit weird.

“First, perhaps you should talk to the young lady in question?” Alfreida said archly. “After all, you don’t know if she’s staying yet.”

Jaybyrd flushed, wiping crumbs off her skirt. “Ah. Right. Of course.”

She hurried away from Alfreida’s knowing look and did her best to straighten her hair, curled wisps already escaping from the tight coils from the long day she’d had running around either soothing or propping egos.

Her hasty toilette was all for naught. She rounded into the alcove but was shocked and disappointed to find it Tiamat free. 

The fur rug had been neatly and considerately folded, and a plate had been left where the staff could find it easily, with the stripped remnants of one of Alfreida’s famous roast fowls left on it.

Jaybyrd slumped. Had Tiamat completed her mission and then just left? She’d said she would wait!

Hold on. Jaybyrd came forward and looked at the plate. Tiamat had done something to the bones. She had built a house out of them.

No, she had built a _Mant_ out of them, rectangular, low and long. She’d used what bones were left to make a square on the plate next to the little bone Mant, within which she’d placed the sprig of marthastella Jaybyrd had given her. 

Jaybyrd considered it. If the Mant had been positioned the same direction as the actual Waynemant lay, then the square would represent the walled kitchen garden attached to it. Invigorated anew, Jaybyrd grabbed the sprig and went out the kitchen doors and into the garden, where the crickets were starting to chorus and the shadows were beginning to lengthen in the twilight.

She didn’t immediately see Tiamat anywhere in it. She looked around, puzzled.

Then a boot clattered down from the sky and bounced off her head.

“Oh my goodness! I’m so sorry!” A voice exclaimed from on high. “It slipped!”

Jaybyrd looked up, bewildered. Then her jaw dropped. 

Tiamat was on the Mant’s roof! She was on the actual roof, perched up there like a starling!

“How in Ennu’s name did you get up there?!” Jaybyrd called up. 

“I jumped!” was the cheerful if bewildering reply. 

“You what?” Jaybyrd asked as she mentally mapped out a climbing route. They’d all done it, much to Bryce’s despair. She couldn’t talk though, Alfreida had stories of her own.

“Like this!” Tiamat replied.

Then she was down on the ground, right next to Jaybyrd. Jaybyrd jumped in surprise. She barely had time to spare, though, because Tiamat took her by the hand and…

… suddenly Jaybyrd was on the roof of the Mant. She wavered in surprise, but the flat shingle at the crest was as wide as a garden path and, as mentioned, the environs were nothing new to her.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” Tiamat went red. “I should have asked first!”

“No it’s fine,” Jaybyrd reassured her once her eyes were back in their sockets. “It is, really! It’s better than trying to climb in this blasted skirt, anyway. Not that I can’t. Or haven’t,” she added proudly. 

Tiamat smiled up at her. And she really was smiling up, because she’d taken her boots off and was now, unbelievably, even shorter. She barely made it to Jaybyrd’s chest. 

“So, um, that’s your Gift? Is it your father’s or your mother’s?” Jaybyrd asked.

“Sort of both and neither,” Tiamat replied sheepishly. “Mother sends herself out over long distances, like a ghost. Father can move things without touching them. I can move _myself_ without having to go through the in between. Myself and anything I’m holding onto. Mother was not best pleased that I got myself an Unnamed Gift. That’s bad luck for the Mant, she said.”

“But that’s a really useful Gift!” Jaybyrd blurted. “Imagine being able to go anywhere you wanted!”

“No, it doesn’t work quite like that,” Tiamat smiled. “I can only go somewhere I know very well. Somewhere I’ve seen before, so I can picture it in my head, sort of. I couldn’t just… jump into Gotham, because I’ve never been there. Besides, I couldn’t jump that far anyway. The range is very short; hence Mother’s disappointment. It’s almost completely useless, Mother says.”

Jaybyrd huffed. “Just because you haven’t _found_ a use for it doesn’t mean it’s _useless._ I mean, it got you up here, didn’t it? That’s impressive. Most of those Mantdaughters would be quaking in their ridiculous boots standing up here.”

Tiamat flushed with pleasure. Her bare feet were as surefooted as a goats on the slate and she was dizzyingly unconcerned about the height. “I’m from the mountains,” she explained to Jaybyrd’s admiring look. “I’ve been in higher places than this. More precarious, too.”

Tiamat sat back down next to her single remaining boot and sad, empty stockings. “I’m sorry I didn’t wait like you asked,” she said contritely. “I was going to, but the servers all talked about how the evening train would be coming soon and… and I’ve never seen a train. I just _had_ to come out and see it,” she explained earnestly.

Jaybyrd grinned widely. “You like trains too?”

“I’m very interested, but I don’t know much about them,” Tiamat admitted. “There aren’t any books on them and no one in Drakemant has seen them either. I only know what I’ve heard from people talking about them. Is it really a big wagon that drives on ruts in the road?”

Jaybyrd laughed delightedly. “Not ruts, _tracks_. They’re, um, like two long beams made of iron placed equal distance apart. The train wheels are shaped so that they fit on the beams and sort of… lock it in place on them. There, down there, you see that raised line? That’s the tracks the engineers laid. It’s rough work, laying tracks. First you have to lay down a bunch of crumbled stone to make it exactly level, then you have to anchor in long wooden planks lengthwise and then lay the tracks on top of them. It’s all to make sure the track stays level and the beams stay the same distance apart on either side. Otherwise the train can’t move at all.”

“You mean,” Tiamat was astounded and charmingly willing to show it. “You actually have to _build a road_ just for trains to use?”

“That’s right,” Jaybyrd nodded.

Tiamat’s face screwed up in adorable confusion. “But what if you need to go… somewhere else than where the track is? Like, a shortcut or something?”

“Short answer, you can’t. You can’t take a train anywhere without tracks. If you need it to go anywhere else you have to lay the tracks first,” Jaybyrd told her.

“So it can’t… choose it’s route, like a horse or a deer could?” Tiamat asked.

“No.”

“And… it’s a lot of effort to get to go anywhere at all, because you have to build tracks first?” Tiamat deduced. 

“Yes, lots. We hosted a lot of the labourers here when Bryce told the rail company they could build a line up to Waynemant. When the fete’s over they’ll all be back,” Jaybyrd replied. “The line’s not finished yet, but we have got a whole water and coal station now,’ she added proudly.

“And if, let’s say, the track breaks or… or gets flooded or something…” Tiamat essayed tentatively. 

“Then the train can’t move until you fix it,” Jaybyrd nodded. 

“It sounds like a _lot_ of work where a wagon train could just… drive,” Tiamat said dubiously, somewhat less enthused. “Is it _faster_ that a horse?”

“Yes and no,” Jaybyrd replied swiftly, feeling like she was losing ground on the pro side of trains. “They can go about twenty miles an hour at top speed, but they don’t usually run them that fast. Horses can outrun them; but! The engineers I asked,” pestered, more like, but that was just Bryce’s opinion. “Said they reckoned they could get them to go a lot faster with time. There is enough power in steam to go faster, they’re just trying to get the mechanism to catch up without, you know, exploding.”

“They _explode?”_ Tiamat was shocked.

“Uh, sometimes. Like, if someone is _really careless_. The engineers are all really careful, though,” Jaybyrd insisted.

Tiamat made a face. “Slow, dangerous, difficult to move, high maintenance… I can’t see many advantages to these trains,” she said, clearly disappointed.

“There’s lots!” Jaybyrd retorted staunchly, because she would not be moved on the goodness of trains. “For one thing, a horse might be faster, but you can’t take it hundreds of miles a day. You’d kill it. Trains? Trains will go and go and not stop until you tell them. I mean, you do have to take on coal and water, of course, but the distance they can make between stops is enormous. Plus, horses last, what, twenty years? And if you’re lucky you’ll get to actually ride them for about fifteen, if nothing breaks or they don’t get sick. Trains don’t get sick and they don’t break easily and you can fix them when they do, and the engineers all said a good train could last a century or more. And! A horse can take one passenger quickly or maybe two a bit slower. A wagon can take maybe a dozen, more if it’s a ox cart, but either way you’re crawling along with that much weight. A train can take _hundreds_ of people and still go twenty miles an hour the whole way. People _and_ cargo too. Trains are strong.”

“So, it’s not so much convenience,” Tiamat essayed slowly. “As it is weight and distance. A train can’t go _anywhere_ but where it can go it unfailingly goes and can carry a lot with it. More than a long caravan even! And they last a long time, so you can consistently promise goods being able to travel a long way without risk of stealing or spoiling!” Tiamat clapped her hands, enthusiasm restored.

“That’s right!” Jaybyrd crowed. “Like, we could _never_ get ocean fish here very much before. Just getting it here was so expensive and it was usually half spoiled no matter how much ice and snow they packed it in. It wasn’t worth it. But with the train, we can get it up here in a day, freshly caught. Tons of it, if we wanted it. We could eat fish every day for a month if we wanted to, cheap.” This was, it has to be said, a little bit of an exaggeration because they’d only ever made use of the service once for that, but Jaybyrd was willing to fib a little for the honour of trains.

Tiamat grinned. “I’ve never seen an ocean fish before either. I’d like to try it. I suppose it’ll be a while for me. It’ll still be a long time before they can lay tracks to Drakemant. It’ll be even longer for anyone there to think to make use of the trains.” She shifted her legs, grimaced, and rubbed her ankle. “I wonder what Friesmant will make of the trains. After all - ow!” she winced again, rubbed her feet. “They had a monopoly on maintaining the icehouses for the Mants with their Gift. It doesn’t seem like we’d need icehouses if trains can bring milk and fish and butter every day. Ouch!”

“What’s wrong with your feet _damnation, what happened to them?_ ” Jaybyrd got a peek at the dainty ankles and was horrified to see the red, raw, swollen patches on them.

“It’s the boots,” Tiamat said. “I could hide the dress away while I was on the road but I didn’t have the bag space for an extra set of shoes with it, even dress slippers. I used mountain cleats on the mountain roads, and they let me get away with them on the convoy, but I didn’t think the High Brantari would appreciate me scuffing her floors with cleats so I bought a pair of boots at a trading stop on the road. I asked them to give me a good boot for wearing to a fete. They gave me these monstrosities,” she waved the frankly ridiculously high heeled, even for fashion, boot she had left. “And they charged extra for making them in a child’s size even though they would use _less leather,_ ” Tiamat was clearly still sore on this point. “I didn’t really have a chance to break them in and I sold my cleats to pay for them so, um, this is all I’ve got right now.”

Jaybyrd laughed. “A _child’s_ size dress boot! What dainty little feet you must have.” She smirked harder when Tiamat scowled at her grumpily. 

“Honestly, I think the cobbler was jesting with me when she said it was fashionable,” Tiamat eyed the maligned boot disdainfully. “They were badly made and she wanted to be rid of them so she took the first gullible idiot buying who would fit them, I expect. She _can’t_ have been in earnest when she said the heels had to be that high!”

“Oh, Baby Bird,” Jaybyrd laughed harder. “If anything, she underestimated.” Tiamat’s jaw dropped. “I can kind of see what she was trying to do. You asked for a fashionable boot. In these parts it’s fashionable to be _tall.”_ Jaybyrd gently grasped the other girl’s feet and put the poor raw appendages in her lap.

Tiamat went scarlet, either from the slight or from Jaybyrd’s hands on her ankles. “Oh,” she said weakly. She looked at her lacy concoction of a dress. “Well, I already knew I wouldn’t be fashionable in this old thing. I should have just bought dress slippers and accepted it gracefulleeeeoooh what was that?” she asked, astonished.

Jaybyrd continued circling the raw spots on her feet, the tingle of the Spell Knife dancing at her fingertips as she pulled the pain out. “It’s my Gift,” she said gruffly. “Well, sort of. I have the Spell Knife,” she confessed, willing herself not to tense up, waiting for the horror and fear. The Spell Knife was second only to the Unmaking in infamy and terror.

“I could be wrong,” Tiamat said, her voice not a whit changed or stressed. “But isn’t the Spell Knife more… put pain _in_ than take it out?” Nothing but curiosity, in tone and look.

She was being diplomatic. It was sometimes pain and sometimes straight up death, the victim dropped without a word or a mark. Jaybyrd hid her relieved huff under a snort anyway. “If you ask my waste-of-space sire, that’s certainly true. But Bryce thinks we use our Gifts backwards. She thinks they should be used to help people, not for conquest. She taught me to use it to pull the knife out rather than put it in.” That was glossing over the sheer effort it had taken. Between the fact that she had a Gift where she’d been taught girls shouldn’t and the infamy of the Gift itself, it had been hour after hour, month after month of painfully slow progress convincing Jaybyrd that _no, you’re not a monster._

“Oh,” Tiamat considered that as the pain went away. “That’s… that’s an interesting idea. I’d not thought of it that way.” Then she blinked. _“Baby Bird?”_

Jaybyrd willed her ears not to go red. “Uh well, you’re kind of small and… well, you tilt your head like a curious bird a lot.”

“I do not,” Tiamat tilted her head then visibly straightened. “Do I?”

Jaybyrd smiled. “Sorry, the nicknaming thing is a habit. I couldn’t call you little bird, that’s what Bryce calls me. Dixie’s pet name from Bryce is Robin. I call her Big Bird. She calls me Little Wing.”

“Wouldn’t that make Damienne the Baby Bird?” Tiamat asked. “She’s younger than me, isn’t she?”

“Dami’s nickname isn’t fit for polite company,” Jaybyrd smirked. “Trust me, when you meet her you’ll understand why.”

“Where are you sisters? I don’t think I saw them at the fete,” Tiamat asked.

“They went into the city,” Jaybyrd shrugged. “Dami needed supplies for school, since it starts again soon.

A powerful longing overtook Tiamat’s vivid face. “You all go to school, don’t you? I wish… never mind,” she shook her head and looked away.

“Your parents don’t believe in the new school system, I’m thinking,” Jaybyrd circled one ankle with a thumb soothingly. “They don’t want you to travel into the city.”

“If my mother had her way I wouldn’t even travel outside of my room,” Tiamat spoke with unexpected bitterness. “I have to stay close and marry and beget sons and save the Drake line for I had the temerity to be born a girl. If she wasn’t already doing it anyway, I think this will be what pushes her into arranging a match with someone she finds suitable. She doesn’t like my wayward attitude; she sees marriage as a kind of cure.”

Jaybyrd’s hand tightened convulsively on Tiamat’s feet. It would happen, she knew. It happened all over the Carrantages even now, to girls even younger than they were. Tiamat had, theoretically, a right of refusal but in real life her parents could give their permission and never once even consider she had the right to have a say in the matter.

“I don’t even know how to _like_ boys,” Tiamat whispered. “They keep saying I must because it’s nature and I just… don’t. I never quite got the trick of it.”

Jaybyrd felt a swell of panic at the thought of this lovely little bird being sold off to some brainless brute of a Mantson, or worse, some wrinkled old fogey who’d treat her like a pretty piece of furniture. Tiamat, who was brave and unconventional and devastatingly intelligent and curious, who had a far less than even chance of even surviving the throes of childbirth. Death or all that spirit crushed from her, like Jaybyrd’s own defeated mother; who could even say which fate would be worse?

Could Jaybyrd convince her to run? It could be… hard to break away from the Mant, even when you knew how bad it was. Even Jaybyrd hadn’t left of her own will; she’d been thrown out to die after her mother’s scant protection vanished with her death. It had taken a long time for Jaybyrd to throw off the culturally instilled belief that she was cursed for being rejected by her own Mant, something that was as taboo as it was possible to be in the tightly knit Mant ecosystem. 

Tiamat had what sounded like reasonably comfortable circumstances. Her unconventionality was a rebellion, but that didn’t mean she did fear the stigma of exile. She might not be willing to make that blind leap into the unknown, not when the Mant with its tightly gripping, cage like fingers, meant safety from a rough world. Jaybyrd couldn’t blame her for that; the Mants could be confining and the traditions smothering, but it was all they knew. It was all _she_ knew.

“I’m not sorry I came though,” Tiamat added, fiercely brave. 

“I’m glad you came too,” Jaybyrd told her.

Tiamat blushed, and they sat in silence for a while, each gnawing on their own separate worry.

“When I first went to the city, I went to a play,” Jaybyrd said abruptly. “It’s like… like a mummering, only the actors are all up on a stage and you’re sitting in the audience and… and anyway, this play was about… it was a comedy about two people who wanted to get married and each fall for the other and didn’t know it and it was all about them finding that out. I don’t really remember most of it but the one part I do remember is that they had this character and they called him Brantor and he was supposed to be, like, this version of what the lowlanders all think a Brantor is like.”

“Did they seek his counsel?” Tiamat asked, because that’s what a young Mantfolk couple would have done. 

Jaybyrd shook her head. “He was… they made him into a joke. They sent this actor out and he’s in this awful, ugly old moth eaten fur mantle, and he’s made up to look all dirty and smelly and he stomped about yelling and big part of what made him funny was that he couldn’t read or write and kept pretending he could to save face. He was almost like… his mind was feeble.”

“But a Brantor wouldn’t be like that at all,” Tiamat frowned. “My father is nothing like that! He’s very intelligent!”

“So’s Bryce,” Jaybyrd agreed. “I remember sitting there feeling so _angry_ about it. Like, is that really what they think of us? All dirty and stupid and prideful, losing our tempers at every little thing? It seemed to me they had no idea who the Manfolk really were. There was no acknowledgement of the hard work Bryce and the others had done to keep people safe and find children kidnapped by raiders and help build parts of the city, nothing to show them how much we care for our families and our people. How even a child not of blood can be made so, just as important as any blood heir, which the lowlanders never seem to do. To them, it was like we were almost animals, and not even dangerous ones.”

“Then I thought about my sire and pictured what he would have done if faced with the city and the police and the laws which he disdained and I realized that he’d have been just like that clown on the stage,” Jaybyrd’s voice was certain. “He’d have been worse than that, even, nasty and arrogant and cruel as well.. I was angry because it was insulting but I was also angry because they were sort of _right,_ at least in part. And then the real truth hit me; they were free to laugh at us, because they don’t need us.”

Tiamat looked shocked. “But… don’t we protect them? From raiders and things?”

“Mostly it seems like we’re protecting them from _us,_ and not very well, either,” Jaybyrd snorted. “That’s what all those Brantors pretending to respect Bryce don’t understand. They talk a good game about riding down and showing the lowlanders who’s boss, but the lowlanders could wipe up all out in a day if they really wanted. They have a standing army, we don’t. They have all the supply lines, we don’t. They have allies all around. We’ve spent a thousand years pillaging from our neighbours and we haven’t made many friends doing it. We don’t know how to work together because each Brantor is a tyrant in his own kingdom who submits to no one on principle, and the lowlanders have mastered working together, acting together, for the common good.” 

Jaybyrd shook her head. “The Brantors think their Gifts mean they're naturally on top and that might have been true a century ago but it’s not now. While the Mantfolk all sat up here in their moldy Mants sticking to the old ways, the lowlanders got busy building roads and libraries and schools and trains. They didn’t just repeat the past, they improved the present. If they really made it a fight, Gifts wouldn’t help the Mants win, not like they expect them to. And honestly? That’s probably what all those decrepit fogeys hate the most. They can talk all they want, but they _know_ the lowlanders won’t just run scared anymore. The lowlanders laugh at us. They barely believe Gifts are even real, and certainly they don't see them as a real threat.”

“Maybe,” Tiamat said in a strained little voice. “We don’t need to… to scare them anymore. We need not hold either side separate. Maybe we can force alliances. Maybe we can… trade?” the waver at the end was telling, because Tiamat instantly spotted the problem.

Jaybyrd named it. “We have nothing they want. We have land that’s mostly mountain and what’s left is sour from overuse. We have some good breeding lines for horseflesh, fine, but trains are coming and can haul more in one trip than a horse can in a year. We have some craftsmen and a few valuables but the city has factories and textile mills and… and they don’t need us, Baby Bird. I’d argue that they never needed us, we just got good at scaring them into thinking that they did. We convinced them so well we sort of convinced ourselves, too. Well, they aren’t scared anymore, and it seems like the less scared they get the more we have to fear. We’re not in charge anymore. We haven’t been for a while, I think. The lowlanders all know it and the Mants don’t. Or they don’t want to.”

“So.. what can we do, though?” Tiamat asked, her tone one of edging out over a fathomless, bottomless abyss. “How can… we... make them understand that?” Her face was unhappy, but not combative. Jaybyrd got the feeling she wasn’t saying anything Tiamat hadn’t considered, in a small and half-realized way at least. Her understanding of the schism of history was fine, but her grasp of the scope was, by virtue of her isolated and lonely life, limited. Coming here and actually seeing the changes up close would likely have broadened her understanding immensely, as well as made her vague discomfort with her own ideas cuttingly acute. 

“Bryce is already doing it,” Jaybyrd replied. “She sends us to school, and pays for all the staff’s children to do the same. And any other Mantfolk who are willing. She opened up the borders, told the engineers they could build their tracks right through Waynemant. She’s showing them they can _benefit_ from change rather than just have to suffer through it. It’s like what you were saying about Friesmant. You’re right, eventually there won’t be anymore iceboxes, no one will need them. So Brantor Fries will, if he’s sensible, come to Waynemant and ask the High Brantari ‘what do I do?’ And Bryce will say ‘offer to have your Gifted ride on the trains’ - specially designed cold boxes, on wheels! Go anywhere, even beyond the Carrantages. Take ocean fish into the heart of the desert, even. And if he listens, if he’s willing to adapt, to _change,_ then he’ll rake in money hand over fist and his Gift and his precious bloodline will go on. We got away with not changing for centuries, but we can’t stay the same anymore now. Not and survive, anyway.”

Tiamat’s hand, cold and shaken, landed on Jaybyrd’s. “What if they can’t?” she asked, composed but quiet. “What if everything you said is true but they… can’t.”

“It’s not _can_ or _can’t,_ Baby Bird,” Jaybyrd squeezed her hand. “It’s _will_ or _won’t.”_

Tiamat flinched and looked away. “And then… what do you do? Against a Brantor, whose authority is absolute and a Brantari who will enforce it. What do you do? What can you _say_ to make them understand?”

Jaybyrd thought about it. “I’m not sure,” she admitted slowly. “I’ve never been very good at being patient with idiocy,” she winced at the crumpled expression on Tiamat’s face. “I’m trying to think what people better at it than me would say.”

Silence fell as the sky turned redder and redder, throwing shadows across the sadness in Tiamat’s eyes. Jaybyrd twined their fingers together while she assembled her words.

“Bryce,” Jaybyrd started slowly. “Bryce would probably say something like, Gifts are given, but what we do with them is up to us. That if you want a legacy worth having then you’d better be prepared to put in the work. That the real gift, the most important, the most powerful one, is having the courage to learn. Alfreida would probably say that no matter how you feel about today, the sun will rise tomorrow, and the day after that. Dixie would probably say that as long as someone loves you, you’ve got nothing to be scared of and nothing can really hurt you, so you shouldn’t have any reason to let fear rule you. Dami would probably say anyone dumb enough to cling to an idea that no longer works is dead weight and deserves to be cast aside. Then again, Dami is a demon drat, so we don’t really listen to her.”

Tiamat gave a strained laugh. “What about Jaybyrd,” she asked. “What does Jaybyrd say?”

Jaybyrd looked out over the vista of Waynemant and it’s new fangled train tracks. “The future is a train,” she said eventually. “Whether you get on it or not is up to you but you’re either on it or it’s rolling right past you. You won't stop it by standing in the way of the tracks.”

“I think some would prefer to let it pass,” Tiamat said in a low voice, head tilted down and long hair hiding her face. “They’d even prefer standing on the tracks and getting mowed down to getting on it.”

“Well if you _don’t_ , then you leave.”

Tiamat’s sharp intake of air was audible in the silence.

Jaybyrd squeezed her hand tighter. “You _leave_ , Baby Bird, and you don’t look back.”

Tiamat’s eyes searched the horizon, unseeing. “And go where? To do what? I’m not any more prepared for the future as any other backwards Mantdaughter. I don’t even know how to shake hands properly! I wouldn’t survive in the city with what I have. I have no money, no modern skills, no help. I'd die there. I'd never make it."

“There, no,” Jaybyrd turned to look her in the eyes. “Here? I think you’d be fine here.”

Tiamat stared at her, eyes glittering in the twilight.

“I think you’d do more than fine here,” she told her huskily. 

Tiamat blushed again, and looked back at the tracks. "Just like that, so easily?"

"Change doesn't have to be hard," Jaybyrd took a gamble and kissed the hand she held. "It certainly isn't bad. And Bryce would welcome you. The fogeys might all peeve and complain but that's all they ever do. Bryce has never listened to them. You could stay. Forever. You'd be… I'd want you to. You could stay here and you'd be safe. I promise. I'll protect you if it comes to a fight."

"Would it… could it come to a fight?" Tiamat murmured. "Against the High Brantari and the Unmaking…"

"Against Bryce? Even if she never uses her Gift, I still know which side I'd bet on," Jaybyrd said staunchly. "But they _won't_ Baby Bird. You know they won't. They won't dare. If they're going to cling to the old ways like grim death, they also have to live with the old fears. They won't risk Unmaking. Not for a wayward girl."

"Would you?" Tiamat looked her boldly in the eye. "Would you risk it?"

Jaybyrd leaned forward and pecked her on the lips. "In a heartbeat."

Tiamat was all smiles and blushes as she looked away. “Do you think…” she faltered. “Would I get to ride a train?”

“Every week,” Jaybyrd promised her. “After all, you’d be going to school.”

Tiamat laughed, tears cascading down her cheeks. Jaybyrd took the opportunity to put an arm around her shoulders and draw her close, pressing her lips to the smaller girl’s temple. She kind of loved the fact that Tiamat was small like this, so Jaybyrd could tuck her in close and rest her chin on her soft hair.

The fete, Jaybyrd reflected, had turned out better than she imagined.

“Jay, what’s that?” Tiamat asked after a while. “There’s smoke billowing up over the rise. Is something on fire?”

Jaybyrd looked. “No, Baby Bird,” she grinned. “That’s the train.”

Tiamat was upright and on her feet in an instant, standing on her diminutive tippy toes for whatever advantage it gave her, trying desperately to overcome her own nature to see the anticipated train.

Jaybyrd laughed and scooped her up, perching the smaller girl on her shoulders just as the engine puffed over the rise. 

“Jay, it’s the train!” Tiasmat squealed, bouncing in her excitement. “It’s the train, Jay!” Her face was suddenly _alive_ with joy. “Look at it! It’s so big!”

Jaybyrd didn’t think she had ever seen such pure happiness ever and likely never would see anything quite like it again. She craned her head up to try to fix it in her memory. It was the most amazing sight in the world. Even better than trains. 

“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” she murmured, half to herself.

Tiamat beamed down at her for her height advantage. “It’s the second most beautiful thing I’ve seen today!” she declared, which caught Jaybyrd completely by surprise.

Over the sound of their delighted laughter, the train gave a whistle as it came into the station, bringing the future with it. 


End file.
